The start-up process or services that are started at System Power-Up have always been of concern to me.

I'm not sure how other .sqf or "live" based packages handle this sort of thing, but it is something that I can only assume is quite messy. Since we already have a few things that people are likely to want to load or not-load with their system, I have started work on making this something we can easily change.

I've been giving this a bit of thought for some time, and today I made the first step towards doing something about it.

Before explaining where I'm heading with this, I think some background and concept is required so you can see where I'm heading. Remember that the goal is to have a fully USB or Flash based system, Therefore once we have things "locked down" we don't expect them to change. The real problem is that while we are getting to where we want to be, we will quite likely be making a lot of changes as we poke and prod things into shape. The fact that we will be making lots of changes combined with how "cow" works and the fact that you can't ever really delete anything from a .sqf makes this potentially very messy.

Then there is the "small detail" of "how do you easily change things" while you're playing?

Well, I think I have a solution and I have already taken the first step.

Where I am heading is to create another .sqf that we can play with while we work out what we are going to do and what the final configuration will be. This is where things start to get messy, because right now we can only load 8 .sqf files and we've already used a few.

01-FoxyRoxy02-FoxyDesktop05-SoftOffice95-snap (snapshot of current system changes) ... [read new packages - we're working on it]99-snap (local desktop config stuff)

I haven't included the "sound" .sqfs, because you should merge what you need into 01-FoxyRoxy once you know what you need. If you feel you need to keep the basic .sqfs, the move, rename them, or put backups elsewhere.

Easy one first. If you are going to use an Office Package, then merge it into FoxyDesktop. Seriously, it is suggested you do this once you've worked out what Office type package you want to use, if any.

Once you've got your desktop stuff sorted, you should also merge this into the FoxyDesktop .sqfSo now we are back to the primary 2 .sqfs which is our end-goal.

I have just reserved the "04" location for 04-FoxyServices.squashfs so I hope you can see where I'm heading with this I have already created the first cut of 04-FoxyServices.squashfs with the basic scripts to load/save both 04-FoxyServices.squashfs and 04-FoxyServices.squashfs.noload

I have also removed the following directories and files from 01-FoxyRoxy.squashfs and 02-FoxyDesktop.squashfs---(file) /etc/profile (file) /etc/rc.local(file) /etc/services---(dir) /etc/default(dir) /etc/init.d (dir) /etc/insserv(dir) /etc/insserv.conf.d(dir) /etc/rc*.d---(dir) /var/lib/initscripts(dir) /var/lib/insserv(dir) /var/update-rc.d---

This has resulted in a tiny .sqf of 76kb which we can easily play with using something like Boot-Up-Manager which is already in FoxyRoxy ( look in the Task Bar Menu - Administration )

Over the next few days, I'll play with creating scripts to carve-out (create 04-FoxyServices) and re-inject it back into 01-FoxyRoxy) while playing with BUM and making sure it all works.

Hopefully at the end of this, we will have a really neat and unique way of configuring what services we want to start.

This will become much more important as people start playing with various media servers (players) and I start working on the NAS itself, for this reason I don't see it as a distraction and as an important and critical requirement. Over the next few days, I will drop various notes and reminders in here for myself or ask for help. If this is something you have ideas/thoughts on or know of a great Debian tool to help configure services, then now is the time to let me know.